Four months on, passengers still facing issues using DigiYatra service at Chennai airport

DigiYatra at Chennai airport faces glitches, causing inconvenience to passengers despite efforts to resolve issues quickly.

It has been nearly four months since the DigiYatra was launched at Chennai airport, but some of the air passengers say, they still have trouble using the facility.

Sathish Galley, a frequent traveller said, he recently flew from Chennai to Bengaluru and couldn’t use DigiYatra. “When my wife and I tried to pass through the DigiYatra gate at the airport, it wasn’t functioning. So, we had to join the regular queue back and it took us more time. It was pretty disappointing,” he added.

The DigiYatra service commenced in Chennai airport in June this year, with the objective that those who sign up for this initiative will have a separate queue and e-gates to complete the various checks in the terminals without having to wait in regular queues.

Officials of Airports Authority of India (AAI) said, the airport sees about 25,000 domestic passengers departing every day and of that, 10% use the DigiYatra facility. “The glitches that occur amount to less than 1%. Initially, some of the CISF personnel were closing the gates, but subsequently on hearing about it, we have informed them and this no longer happens. There were some server issues recently because of which some of the passengers couldn’t use DigiYatra. We have already raised it with the respective company handling the servers and the minor problems are being ironed out,” an official said.

Some of the passengers have posted about their experiences on the ‘X’ platform as well.

Dheeraj Taneja, a passenger posted: “DigiYatra not working at Chennai airport and CISF show their helplessness @JM_Scindia, they say terminal manager doesn’t listen..not what we expect on a modern day travel, no sign either to say it’s not working.”

Another passenger Sagar Mestri posted: “@aaichnairport What an irony! Just had to show my paper boarding pass at Chennai airport domestic transfer gate. The security refused to accept digiyatra scanning, which ended up forming a big queue and unnecessary stress to the people who had to catch their connecting flight! @DigiYatraOffice”